Monthly Archives: November 2017

These are my notes from General Dubik’s talk on Friday, November 17, 2017.

Gen Dubik is highly credentialed, including member of CFR. His slides are all titled “Institute for the study of war.“

Shift from agrarian age to Industrial Age took 100 years.1750-1850. Took another 100 years for it to be fully in place. By 1950 everything was different for humanity, including world view, how we live our daily lives, and possibilities for the future.

Many wars during this time. Some fighting to keep what was old, that is, for their own status quo.

Leaders at the end of this time (end of WWII) could remember a lot of the changes and knew what they wanted to avoid. Churchill Roosevelt got together and figured out how they wanted the world to be structured.

1990s end of Cold War beginning of Information Age. The WWII deals started falling apart.Bunch of crises around the globe. No one thought about how to adjust.

Then 9/11. Now it’s a mess but we’re not in a post anything period anymore. Now a pre something period. But what?

Intl community muddled through post Cold War but no real guidance or leadership by nations or groups of their leaders.

Now, we not only have countries but non state entities that take on some of the things countries do. Like al qaeda. Gen Dubick with Gen Sullivan predicted this in 1993. (NOTE: Here is the document he refers to http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/cgsc/carl/download/csipubs/sullivan.pdf and the specific quote he referenced was I believe on page 60.)

Contenders now:

Revisionist powers. Russia china Iran. Seek to establish new world order with their influence as primary.

Russians invaded and took over parts of Ukraine using significant conventional forces.

Russia wants Syria for the military bases. Also expanding to the arctic because they want to control it because global warming duh.

China. Expanded islands are to expand military areas of control and influence. OBOR. Air sea road and information infrastructure. AIIB asia infrastructure bank. Intended to replace world bank. USA not included.

Revolutionary Powers. Al qaeda and isis. Plan to overthrow apostate governments by force and replace them with their own Islamic governments. Global caliphate.Have almost entirely come to be since 2000. Have a lot of Mid East, North Africa, some Asia.

Rogue state North Korea.

The 3 kinds of new powers are acting independently.

Add the Information Age changes and it’s a lot of force for change very quickly.

USA leadership in question at home and abroad. Can status quo hold? No. What will new world order look like? No answer yet.

Revolutionary powers. Reduce their capacity to threaten states and normal life. 1 reduce their capacity i.e. Military 2 reform the impacted areas 3 prevent them from reconstituting themselves. This is by police and diplomatic activities.

Rogue power NK must prevent them from destabilizing intl environment. We need missile defense for this. Good sanctions will help. Do not trigger war.

Other issues that we need help from allies are global crimes and global issues like climate change.

What’s the USA role? Govt need to have conversations with the USA public to determine this complex stuff. (Note: This is the part of his presentation that I thought was really incomplete. What does “conversations” mean? Is that what it’s called when lobbyists grease the palms of decision makers in DC?)

Lawerence of Arabia example. Nothing is written unless we write it.

Questions

Impact of USA administrations:bush Obama trump all the same. “You can’t kill your way out of a revolutionary problem”

Is trump too friendly with Russia. Need to have some relationship but they aren’t friends they are competitors. No one wants a war. (Note: The correct term here is frenemies.)

Which one should we focus on first. Al qaeda or isis. Doesn’t matter. As we focus on one the other one rebuilds.

Dubik’s opinion of military individuals in power in trump administration. Of two minds. Thank god for these guys to help the nation through this. Other mind, 3 generals in those positions is not good for a democracy. 1, suggests only military is trustworthy. 2, generals have a similar worldview to one another so reduced range of ideas available.

Economics of how to do this. Not easy. Eisenhower had the same problem. Need to fix the whole world on a budget.“War is not a cost effective activity.”

How do you end a war. Know what the war is before you get in it. What the enemy is about. We have not done this at the start of our current wars and have not adapted or effectively tried to figure it out as we go along either.

How will technology impact this shift. There’s no roadmap for this. It’s called an adaptive leadership problem. The answers change over time. Requires institutions and processes. Specific tactics will change under those umbrellas. We’re the USA damn it we can do this.

Will UN and NATO help. Who knows. Are they useful. He thinks we need a new alliance to fight al qaeda/ISIS.

Will china help with NK. Sure but it’s a negotiation. That is, a negotiation between US and China as well as between US/NK and NK/China.

What about SK. Yes they will. They have to. It will be a conversation. It would be nice if we had an ambassador to SK or people in the NE Asia part of the state dept. (This was his only complaint of the evening that could be considered a complaint about Trump. And lots of questions were aimed at trying to get him to badmouth Trump. When those kinds of questions came up he was clear that Trump/Obama/Bush were all problematic.)

Book. Just wars reconsidered. It’s about how the leadership of fighting forces have moral dilemmas to consider, not only the guys on the battlefield with the guns.

What about Europe. Relationship has been deteriorating over last 3 admins. Not really alliances to war more like posses. Posse has to follow the sheriff. Alliances have partners. The thing about paying money (to NATO and UN) is a smokescreen. We need alliances.